Wi-Fi locating technology is commonly incorporated into a mobile wireless device to aid in the determination of the location, position and/or motion of the mobile wireless device. It is desirable that the Wi-Fi locating technology of the mobile wireless device be capable of determining the location of the mobile wireless device quickly, accurately and under a wide variety of conditions.
Wi-Fi Positioning Systems (WPS) are known in the art that maintain a large global public database of Wi-Fi access points and their precise locations throughout the world. The data from a WPS database may be used by a mobile wireless device having locating technology to identify its location. Conventional location determination techniques used in existing wireless networks may utilize round-trip time (RTT) measurements derived from signals transmitted between the mobile wireless device and the Wi-Fi access points to determine the location of the mobile wireless device.
It is desirable to be able to test the performance of the Wi-Fi locating technology of a mobile wireless device to predict the speed, accuracy and sensitivity of the locating and positioning technology of the device. Testing the performance of the mobile device in a WLAN environment prior to the mass production of the device will mitigate the risk that the device will not perform as expected in a real-world scenario. However, in order to properly test the device, numerous scenarios must be emulated in a test environment, absent ambient noise and sources of interference.
Field testing systems are known in the art for testing the Wi-Fi locating technology of a wireless device. However, field testing of the Wi-Fi locating technology requires physically positioning the access points and the wireless device at various locations. As such, field testing is costly and time-consuming and suffers from lack of reliability and repeatability.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method that provides repeatable and reliable emulation of real-world scenarios to test the performance of Wi-Fi locating technology implemented in a mobile wireless device.